Land grabbing, deforestation and other environmental crimes have been added to the list of offences classified as crimes against humanity, according to the International Criminal Court.
Razing a forest to the ground, contaminating a river, seizing land from developing countries — these crimes have repercussions not only for the environment and the communities against whom the injustice is perpetrated, but for the whole of humanity.
It is precisely for this reason that the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague has announced that it will also prosecute environmental crimes, henceforth judged as crimes against humanity. To convey the magnitude of this historic decision: the ICC, the highest judicial authority tasked with judging serious crimes of international concern, will now treat the worst environmental offences on a par with genocide or war crimes.
Among the most serious environmental crimes, land grabbing undoubtedly stands out. This practice involves the sale of large tracts of land to third parties without the consent of the communities that live on them or rely on them for their subsistence. In practice, it amounts to the seizure of land in developing countries by foreign multinationals, with far-reaching social consequences. Land grabbing leaves thousands of farmers around the world without food, forcing entire communities to abandon their land. It is precisely the mass forced displacements that result from land grabbing that the ICC will now assess. Among the countries worst affected by this phenomenon are Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea. From today, ICC prosecutors will oversee land grabbing practices.
It appears that the final straw was a land grabbing case in Cambodia involving businessmen and government officials, on which Fatou Bensouda, the ICC's prosecutor, has been working. Bensouda reopened the case, which had been shelved in 2014, in which the Cambodian government is accused of having forced 350,000 people to leave their homes and live in poverty.
Illegal land grabbing will not be the only crime overseen by the ICC; cases of reckless exploitation of natural resources, deforestation and the construction of high-impact infrastructure will also be assessed — such as the enormous dams that are tearing Brazil apart. "Bosses and complicit politicians who destroy the land, guilty of razing tropical forests or poisoning drinking water sources, could soon find themselves on trial in The Hague, alongside war criminals and dictators," commented Gillian Caldwell, executive director of Global Witness, a British human rights NGO.
For the ICC to be able to prosecute those responsible for environmental crimes, they must come from one of the 139 countries that have signed the Rome Statute — though this list does not include, among others, several countries responsible for serious social and environmental violations, such as China, India, Indonesia and Ethiopia.